


Leading with The Chin

by mightbeanasshole



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canon Divergence, M/M, s5e11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 08:13:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6147351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbeanasshole/pseuds/mightbeanasshole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Saul-POV rework of season 5, episode 11 where Saul doesn't reach for the gun.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leading with The Chin

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from tumblr:   
> Jesse beating the shit out of Saul
> 
> Yes, I will even write something relationship-oriented about Saul getting the shit beat of him. This is my life now.

 

The drive to the ABQ emergency room is more than a little awkward. Huell rides the caddy at the speed limit, looking incredibly uncomfortable behind the wheel, and he keeps shooting pointed glances over at Saul in the passenger seat – wanting to ask but not sure how lightly to tread.

Saul is cradling his ruined face in a clean T-shirt that Francesca had produced on their way out the door. It had been a battle to get everyone on the same page without 20 goddamned questions.

_Yes, Francesca, I seriously need you to take Jesse home. No, Jesse, you really can’t come with us to the emergency room. Yes, Huell, I truly want you to drive my car._

Saul’s swallowing blood as they exit the highway and he works his tongue around his mouth for the fiftieth time to confirm that yes several of his teeth are indeed looser than they should be – but they’re all inhabiting their original homes and that, for one, is a small blessing.

The walls of his mouth are hot and tinny and filthy but it’s the first time he’s lost the taste of the desert afternoon two days ago, where he’d been ordered to _go take a walk_ , where he’d then heard Walt’s tone with Jesse go soft and soothing in a way that screamed _danger_ like a downed livewire, where he’d watched Jesse rail against the man who was dissecting their lives and turning every bit oversweet and then rotten.

The taste had made its way into Saul’s mouth by the time he turned to see Jesse surrender into the embrace of his whole life’s ruin. A disaster. It’s always the desert. His mouth felt full of sand at the image and nothing had changed it until Jesse Pinkman had beat his face in, until Saul was spitting his own blood.

—

It had been a good afternoon to take several punches and scream for his life – the type of waning day that he didn’t want to see any more of, where Saul hoped to drink or sleep or do anything to forget who he is.

Jesse had been off to his new life and there was some consolation in that. Saul was not ready to begin the perilous journey across the minefield of his feelings surrounding the fact that he would never see Jesse Pinkman again – and so he spent the first half hour after Jesse left his office trying to decide what vice might best keep him sane and far, far away from introspection.

Saul was missing things that had been gone for a long time, anyway. At least Jesse gone – and renamed, reborn, untraceable – meant closure. It meant Saul wouldn’t find himself reaching for the phone after too many drinks with the impulse to _just check up._ It meant Saul wouldn’t sit in three-way meetings staring at familiar lips and wondering if they should give it one last shot. It meant not wondering and not doing the worst thing he could possibly do: _hope for something._

The kid isn’t even himself anymore, so he doesn’t know why he’s feeling so torn about it. Saul can chart the downfall like some after-school special – no need to read between the lines. When he got word that the DEA had Pinkman and that Hank Schrader of all goddamned people was interrogating him, it had taken very little to get Saul storming through the door with a fist clenched around his expensive briefcase handle like the hilt of a sword.

“ _Will you do me a favor and tell me what is up with you?”_

The million dollar question. As soon as Saul asked, he knew that he didn’t want to know the answer – knew he _already knew_.

And then the ride to the desert, just the two of them in the car with something hanging between them. The clear sunlight when Walt arrived, and Jesse raising that sore, foreign voice that only made things worse, that was blunted by a stuffed nose. His sinuses were shot to shit from crying for hours – days, Saul thinks – and it did a little bit to temper the tough cowboy sound coming out of the kid with the reminder that Jesse is, in fact, _just a kid._

_“Would you just for once stop working me?”_

Walt barely reacted to the request but it hit Saul viscerally.

Because it isn’t just Walt. Saul’s been working him too.

Yes, Saul had been working Jesse towards stability and a trajectory that didn’t crash into a brick fucking wall before shattering beyond repair – but he’d been _working him_ all the same.

(Had it been because Jesse didn’t know how to trust someone to be his friend, or had it been because Saul has no concept of how to treat someone like a friend? Saul files the question away with the other things that interfere with his sleep and have him measuring out the passage of time in brown liquor as it drains from the bottle.)

In the end it doesn’t matter because on the afternoon Jesse should be practicing forgetting his name and filling in the details of a fabricated backstory with summer camp and school plays and  Christmas mornings and all of the other things that he really did deserve but Saul figures probably never got, Jesse Pinkman is storming back into his lawyer’s office.

Saul never thought he’d see Jesse again and the shock dulls his survival instinct. He should be getting goosebumps and reaching for his gun as the slim man before him locks the door to his office, but instead Saul is practically vaulting towards him.

“He a no-show? Why didn’t you call?”

Jesse answers with a punch to the face that puts Saul on the floor, and then two kicks as Saul goes fetal and yells for him to stop. Adrenaline dumps into his system as Jesse drops his full weight on top of Saul and knocks the wind out of him.

He tastes blood – isn’t sure if it’s from his mouth or his nose or both – and lifts his hands to his face. Jesse is stronger than he’d imagined and the hands that had once balled in the front of Saul’s shirts now seem torn between strangling him and continuing to break themselves up against his face.

 _Survive, survive, survive._ The heartbeat thrum of Saul’s whole life kicks in after half a dozen blows, and he turns his forearms out, makes his body small under Jesse. It doesn’t even occur to him to throw a punch back because in between the roar of his own breathing and blood, he can hear Jesse sobbing and he knows that he can survive this until the kid’s tired himself out.

He’s saying something about the ricin cigarette as he tries to pry Saul’s hands off of his face, as he rolls as much of his weight against Saul’s chest to crush and hurt.

Saul’s taken a beating at least as often as Jesse has, and though he wouldn’t say he does it with dignity, he has his wits. Between the cut of knuckles, he’s thinking and thinking fast. Saul  doesn’t know how Jesse has worked it out, but Saul knows that he has done some sort of mental algebra that’s propelled him away from salvation and back into Saul’s office.

Jesse clamps a hand across the front of his throat and drives a knee down against Saul’s ribs and something moves in a way that shouldn’t with a damp lurch that feels like a point of no return, Jesse punctuating it with a broken _“you fucking bastard._ ”

“Jesse – you gotta believe me – I did, I did it, I didn’t want any of this –” and he’s trying not to babble, not to get distracted by the wet, foreign sound of his own ruined voice. Some piece of Saul in the back of his mind hopes that none of his teeth are missing.

“I fucking worked you – I’m sorry – just like he did,” Saul says, trying anything, knowing how pathetic it sounds, knowing how sorry he really is and how sorry he was before the beating had started, knowing he deserves every ounce of this but knowing, too, that he needs to drive a wedge in and get Jesse to stop, to breathe.

Jesse leans into him, grinding a hoodie-clad forearm painfully across what Saul is sure is now a broken nose – and Saul whimpers, can’t help it.

Maybe that’s what does it: the open appeal of the unguarded sound, the fact that there’s no faking that kind of pain. Their chests are heaving when Jesse stops, when the weight on top of Saul goes inert.

“Don’t say you’re like him,” Jesse says, his voice pinched and small. He continues to sob, silently, his diaphragm spasming against nothing, his forehead pressed into fists that dig into Saul’s chest.

Saul hates himself for what he does next.

No – amend that, he thinks – Saul hates _Walt_ for it. He hates Walt for every bridge the man burned, every decision he’d bullied both of them into, every little deception and manipulation and every piece of Jesse that he’d plucked out and wrecked. He hates Walt for the fact that Saul has never kissed Jesse without wondering if Jesse were just seeking out what he needed from Walt in someone else. He hates Walt for the fact that he’s a silent third party, invisible and always in the room when they are together.

He hates Walt as he pulls Jesse, gone limp now, into a feeble embrace and can’t help but think of the desert, of two days ago, of the taste of sand in his mouth, of the tarantula and the confrontation and the way Jesse had sobbed for Walt, too, before finally agreeing to pack it up.

They both need it but it doesn’t happen long enough because Francesca, beautiful perfect capable loyal jerk of a human being Francesca is unlocking the door and Huell is pushing through.

“Don’t – “ Saul says, looking over Jesse’s shoulder and holding up a hand. His eyes dart between Huell and Francesca as they both try to understand what on God’s green earth they’re witnessing, and he steadies the hand and repeats the command one more time: “ _Don’t._ ”

A cut’s opened up over one of his eyes and finally the blood is beginning to pool and sting. Saul tries to blink it away but by the way it keeps flowing, he knows he’s going to need stitches. Jesse hiccups into the front of his shirt.

“Give us a moment,” Saul says, squinting, hoping the performance is convincing. “Two minutes. I’ll yell if I need you.”

There is a tense beat before Francesca heaves a world-weary sigh and shuts the door behind them. She’s seen stranger shit – Saul knows this and thanks God for it.

Saul’s hands find Jesse’s face, but the minute the kid comes back to himself, he’s retreating, sitting back on his heels and scrambling away.

“We need to talk, yeah?” Saul says, propping himself up on one elbow. There’s a troubling amount of blood pooling in Saul’s mouth and he swallows it, feeling his stomach churn as the adrenaline dump begins to taper off. His legs are trembling as he sits up. His whole body is shaking, he realizes.

Jesse blinks at him, slow and inscrutable with something that might be remorse but certainly isn’t hatred.

“We are _going_ to talk,” Saul says. “I’m glad to see you, kid. But I think I need some stitches, first.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Brba/BCS prompts (and conversation!) always accepted at [tumblr](http://bingoricopimento.tumblr.com/ask).


End file.
